


Yosuke will now die for you!

by DragonBandit



Category: Persona 4
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Self-Esteem Issues, Sickfic, Video Game Mechanics, idiot boy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 01:00:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29251848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragonBandit/pseuds/DragonBandit
Summary: ...This, causes problems.
Relationships: Hanamura Yosuke/Seta Souji
Comments: 2
Kudos: 42
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 6





	Yosuke will now die for you!

**Author's Note:**

  * For [decay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/decay/gifts).



Yosuke twirled his knife around his wrist, watching the shadows surrounding his partner with wary eyes. The floor so far had been grueling, with more encounters than usual and all of them were feeling the strain. Souji most of all, Yosuke was sure. His partner’s grey hair was damp with sweat, and his usual pale skin had turned pink under the muddy dungeon lights. Yosuke was aware that he looked just as bad. His shirt was glued to his chest, his energy was low enough that he’d stopped using the higher wind attacks he’d been granted since Jiraiya had transformed into Susano’o. Not to mention a lucky hit from a shadow that had left Yosuke’s head spinning. 

It was like trying to fight underwater. Or drunk. When Yosuke had checked the supplies he had found that the medicine he needed hadn’t been restocked so he’d have to suffer until it wore off. It wasn’t wearing off as fast as he’d like. Whatever that shadow had done, it had hit him good. He’d downed a can of cheap soda to get his blood pumping and was using the sugar high to keep himself on his feet. 

Occasionally Souji would dart a look at him. Every time Yosuke would force an easy grin. If he revealed how tired he really was there was a chance that Souji would take him off of the front line and that was unacceptable.

At the end of the fight Yosuke braced himself for another run through endless corridors. Unfortunately the rest of the team had other plans. Rise piped up, “Yosuke looks like he’s dizzy.”

Yosuke scowled at her as the entire investigation team turned to look at him. 

“Hey! I’m fine,” he protested when Yukiko pressed a hand to his forehead. Her hands were usually overly warm. Today, against his sweaty skin the touch was cool as summer watermelon. “I’m not sick!”

Chie chimed, “then stop moving and let us check on you!”

“You are more suspect when you struggle,” Naoto said, with their usual aplomb. “What’s the square root of 25?”

“I wouldn’t know that even if I wasn’t dizzy,” Yosuke said. 

Naoto’s nose wrinkled in disgust. 

“It’s not a concussion, is it?” asked Rise, “Oooo, I hate those! I got one on the set of this action movie once and had a horrible headache for a week after. I had to cancel a really important interview because I just couldn’t stop crying from the pain.”

“I’m not crying.” He struggled out from Yukiko’s poking fingers, and Chie’s restraining arms. “I’m not sick! Look!” He twirled his knife again to prove it. Then he dropped it, which sort of ruined the point he was trying to make. 

“I’m not so sure,” Yukiko said. She frowned, eyes going hazy behind her glasses. She was trying to find a solution using her persona. Finally she shook her head, clarity returning. “There’s nothing I can do without medicine.”

That was directed at Souji. 

He was looking at Yosuke with that closed off, inscrutable expression that used to thoroughly piss Yosuke off. These days… No, it still pissed Yosuke off. Especially when it was directed his way. It made butterflies fly in nervous tornadoes around his diaphragm. It made him wonder what was lurking in that head. And if Yosuke would like the outcome.

“I’m fine,” Yosuke said again. 

Souji’s gaze felt like it could see right through him, all the way to Yosuke’s unworthy core. He straightened himself up, dusting off his jacket, and pasting a grin across his face. His head wanted to kill him, sure, but he could manage it. He could fight. There was no reason for all of them to stop just because he was feeling a little under the weather.

“You’re sure?” Souji said. 

“Absolutely, partner. Come on. I’m raring to get a hit on the next few shadows!”

Souji’s lips quirked into the smallest of smiles. He nodded. “Everyone else?”

There was a chorus of affirmations. Yosuke wasn’t the only one who could smell the end of the floor getting close. 

“One more floor, then,” Souji said. With that he rolled his neck with a languorous movement that sent the fringe of his hair to fall into his eyes and bared his neck. He swung his sword off his shoulders, and strode forwards. 

Yosuke was at his back, where he was meant to be.

They survived another three battles by the skin of their teeth before disaster struck. Souji had taken a big physical attack, and was on the floor; he’d switched to the wrong persona just in time. The shadow reeled around for round two. Yosuke’s feet moved before his brain had a chance to issue the order. He leaped between Souji and the descending fist of the Shadow, taking the blunt force straight to the chest. 

“Yosuke!” He’d never heard Souji sound so terrified before. 

The ground was unforgiving as Yosuke’s shoulder hit it. The impact made his already ringing head sing out like a bell. There was more yelling, Yosuke couldn’t tell who. It might have been him. Then someone’s hands were around his shoulders, His chest. A hand cradled the back of his head. It was nice. Yosuke turned into that hand and nuzzled it. It was warm. Large. Slightly calloused on the palms. The cool light of a diarama spell washed over him. 

“You idiot,” Souji breathed. He was really close. Close enough that Yosuke could smell the remnants of his laundry soap. Unscented. Because Souji was a weirdo like that. 

That was kind of nice too. 

Of course the rest of him was in screaming pain and going kind of cold at his extremities so it wasn’t as nice as it could have been. If Yosuke was of the inclination to find the smell of his partner nice. Which he wasn’t. Except for right now. Because he was a little worried that he was dying. Worth it, since it had been saving Souji, but also really fucking terrifying. He was only sixteen. People weren’t meant to die at sixteen. 

…Saki had died at sixteen. 

Thinking about Saki was a mistake. Thinking about Saki always made him cry. 

He didn’t want anyone to see him cry, least of all Souji. He muttered something to that affect, along with “am I dying?” as he hid himself in his saviors shirt. It smelled gross, all sweaty and a bit bloody, and the bit of Yosuke that wasn’t crying about Saki or crying from the pain was freaking the fuck out at what he was doing. He wanted to go back to the nice hand and Souji’s laundry soap. 

“I’m calling it,” Souji said, “Goho-M.” 

The technicolour world of shadows dissolved. Time was lost in a blurred swirl.

Yosuke’s next real moment of awareness was when whoever was holding him overbalanced when they got out of the TV. Then it was the blinding lights of Junes, along with the crummy music that they played over the speakers. 

“Ow,” Yosuke said, squinting his eyes and burying his face in Souji’s shoulder to shield his poor, pounding head. Somewhere, out there in the wide world, there was a conversation happening. Yosuke couldn’t quite make out the words: everything felt like it was being filtered through soup. 

“Is this the first time that someone’s come out of the TV with a condition?” Yukiko asked. 

“Geeze, he said he was fine!” Chie complained. 

“I believe it is,” Naoto said, “of course, my experience in these matters is limited.”

“I didn’t have the right medicine,” Souji’s voice was low, and rumbled against Yosuke’s ear. “I should have remembered to bring the right supplies.”

“It was only meant to be a practice run,” Naoto said. 

“An’ it’s not like you knew he’d take to being throwing himself in the way like that,” Kanji said. 

Souji didn’t say anything in reply. The hand on the back of Yosuke’s neck rubbed at his scalp. Hard callouses rubbed against the sensitive skin on the back of Yosuke’s neck and he fought the urge to tilt into that touch and purr. 

“What do we do with him?”

There was some debate over whether they could send him back home or not. 

“I’ll take him home,” Souji decided, in a voice that made it clear that he wouldn’t be argued with. Fleetingly, Yosuke wondered if there was a reason he should argue about this. Then the hand in his hair carded through it, and he forgot all about what he was supposed to be arguing about in the first place. 

It took Nanako’s welcoming chime for Yosuke to realise that when Souji had said home, he hadn’t meant Yosuke’s home.

“What? Partner?” Yosuke asked. He was ignored. 

“Yosuke’s sick, so I’m looking after him,” Souji told Nananko when she asked why Yosuke was hanging off of Souji’s side. 

“Oh,” She said, “he’s sure to get better with you taking care of him!”

That was Nanako. Always looking on the sunny side of things. Ah, to be a kid again… With that blessing, Yosuke was shuffled upstairs and deposited onto Souji’s futon. It smelled like him, of course it did, and Yosuke felt weird noticing things like that. His head was still ringing; the journey to Souji’s house hadn’t helped the dizzyness at all. Most of him wanted to just bury himself in Souji’s sheets and breathe in the smell of clean laundry and the hint of Souji’s bodywash and never come out again. The little bit of him that was freaking the fuck out at this revelation tried to push himself upright. 

“Hey, man, you really don’t have to do all this,” he said. 

Moving was a mistake. The change in perspective made everything swim until Souji’s room was just a dimly lit blur. 

“Yes, I do,” Souji said. He pushed Yosuke gently, but firmly, back into the soft embrace of the futon. “Get some rest, Yosuke.” 

Rest did sound pretty good right now, Yosuke had to admit. 

“You’re the boss,” he acquiesced. 

Souji made a weird sound at that. A huff of breath, or a sigh, or a snort… something… He was probably holding back a thought that Yosuke was a goddamn annoying idiot who couldn’t take a hint. That’s what most people meant when they choked back words.

“Yeah. I know,” he said. 

“You really don’t,” came Souji’s murmur, right when Yosuke’s overtaxed head finally slipped into the welcoming dark of unconsciousness. 

PAGE BREAK

Turned out that being sick outside of the TV was a major pain. The dizzyness didn’t go away. Instead it morphed into some weird minor cold that meant that Yosuke had to stay bed bound. Or at least that’s what Souji insisted when he saw Yosuke struggle to put on his school uniform. 

Next thing Yosuke had known, Souji’s hand was on his shoulder, pulling Yosuke against his side, and talking into his phone about he and Yosuke weren’t gonna be in, so Chie and Yukiko would have to cover for them. 

“Why do you have to be home?” Yosuke asked through the dizzyness. Souji’s shoulder was really nice. It was soft. And nicely muscled. And smelled good. 

Souji snorted. 

Oh shit. Yosuke hoped that those thoughts hadn’t turned into things he’d said out loud. That would have been a major embarrassment in the major embarrassment that was the whole of Yosuke’s life. 

“To look after you, of course,” Souji said. 

“Uh. You… sure? I’m not a kid or anything. I can make soup or something by myself.”

“Can you?”

“I can better than the girls,” Yosuke said, “It’ll be out of a can I found in the back of the cupboard and I’m using the microwave and it’ll taste a million times better than whatever witches’ brew they’d come up with.”

Souji laughed. 

“I’m still staying with you. I don’t want you to be alone while you’re going through this. It’s not a regular illness, after all.” 

Yosuke gaped. “What. Do you think I’m gonna… explode or something?” Weirder things had happened in the TV.

Souji shrugged. It wasn’t comforting. 

“Dude!”

“Weirder things have happened,” Souji said, “sweet or savory tamagoyaki?” 

“Uh… sweet?” 

Souji nodded, and got up. Yosuke watched him go, working feverishly to piece the non-sequitur together. He got it, in time to yell at Souji’s retreating back, “Dude! You don’t have to cook me breakfast, you know!” He added, to himself, “probably just gonna barf it right back up anyway.” 

Souji raised an arm in acknowledgment. And then made him breakfast. It was delicious. It was significantly less delicious going back up.

Thus was the morning of what was seriously, possibly the weirdest day of Yosuke’s life ever. That was including the time that he’d stuck his hand inside of a TV and it had worked. He’d never really gotten the coddling sick treatment as a kid. His Mom would just check his temperature and put a mask over his snotty nose and shove him out the door. If he was well enough to stand, he was well enough to learn. At least that was his Mom’s theory. Souji’s seemed to be that if Yosuke wasn’t watched every hour of the day some kind of catastrophe would happen. 

Yosuke didn’t get it. 

He spent most of the time he would have been at school drifting between awake and asleep as his head worked out if the pain was better conscious or unconscious. He had some seriously weird dreams. When he awoke Souji was always there. Sometimes he was reading on his couch. Sometimes he was folding leaflets. One time Yosuke was sure Souji was just… staring at him… 

By the afternoon he was significantly more together. The dizziness was now only a headache that made the edges of his vision grey instead of his whole entire sight. The fever had gone down too. His stomach was still iffy though. Souji made chicken soup for dinner and Yosuke feared that if he didn’t feed himself, Souji would spoon feed him. There was that weird look in Souji’s eyes that promised it. 

“I don’t get it,” Yosuke murmured. He stared into the soup broth as if the noodles and meat inside had the answer. 

“Don’t get what?”

“Oh.” He hadn’t meant for Souji to hear that. “Nothing, just thinking out loud.” 

Souji nodded, and then delicately placed a 100-yen coin on the table by Yosuke’s bowl. Yosuke blinked at it. 

“For your thoughts,” Souji said. 

“They’re not worth that much,” Yosuke said. 

“You can keep the change.” 

There was no way to get out of this was there, Yosuke thought. He pushed the coin back and forth with a finger. If he’d been more together he would have tried to do tricks with it. But if he’d been more together he wouldn’t be in this situation at all so that thought was as useless as the rest of Yosuke’s mind. 

“Why are you doing all of this for me?” Yosuke kept his eyes on the coin. “Looking after me and… stuff.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Souji asked. 

“Because I’m not worth it,” Yosuke said. He laughed, covering up the hole in his heart when he admitted that. Same old news, but it hurt just as much as it did the first time Yosuke had realized it. “I’m you know, kind of useless. I’m no front-line hitter like Teddie or Kanji. I can’t give you status reports like Rise. I’m not even a great healer. Only thing I am good at is wind attacks and you’ve got that covered with your whole, changing thing. You’re just keeping me around out of habit, right? It’s fine. I know my job. I keep you up, and that’s the important part.”

“What are you talking about?” Souji said. His voice had gone flat. Souji’s voice was always kind of flat but now it was really flat. Like, could be used to balance a house of cards on flat. Yosuke had no idea what that meant. 

Yosuke grimaced down at his soup. “I figured, if I was going to be your partner, my job would be to take the hits for you. I’d be your shield… I guess. Sounds pretty stupid when I say it out loud. But hey, you’re not the one who got whammied by a shadow so! Doing my job. But all this… stuff… I don’t need it.”

Silence followed. Yosuke took a spoonful of soup. It didn’t taste of anything. 

“What?” Souji said faintly. 

Yosuke chanced a look at Souji’s face. 

He smiled. “It’s okay, partner,” he said, “I know I’m expendable.” 

Souji froze entirely.

Then he lunged across the low table, knocking the two soup bowls to the ground along with the cheap bit of wood, to grab Yosuke by the front of his shirt and snarl, “Stop saying things like that!”

His face was so close. Those grey eyes were flinty with anger. It felt like the first time that Yosuke had ever seen Souji really, truly mad. It rose off him in a cloud of indignant rage. It didn’t make sense. His lips were pressed into a thin line. 

Souji shook him. Hard. It jolted Yosuke’s already sore head and he winced at the treatment. 

“You’re not expendable! You’re not useless!” Souji said. He shook Yosuke again, “I don’t know how you’ve decided that your best place is to be my shield, but you’ll stop doing that! Right now!”

The yelling rattled around the room, and down Yosuke’s spine. 

Yosuke, mired in self-pity and doubt, and the unnammed feeling that he always got around Souji said, “but I made sure you weren’t hurt.”

Souji searched his face for meaning, and then flinched. 

“You didn’t,” he breathed. “Please tell me you didn’t run into that stupid attack because you thought I was more important than you are.” 

Yosuke tried to smile. It was more a grimace. A mere line of his lips pressing against his teeth. Souji looked horrified. It didn’t make any sense. 

“You’re our leader,” Yosuke said. 

Souji’s face fell. He drew away from Yosuke, his eyes falling away to stare blankly at the wall behind Yosuke’s head. 

“Partner?” 

In complete silence, Souji got up from the floor. He brushed down his clothes. Somewhere when he’d lunged across the table he’d spilled soup on his trousers. Yosuke had managed to miss most of the splash back when Souji had pushed everything away. Yosuke watched him, bewildered, as Souji rounded the mess of the table and stood over Yosuke. 

“Get up,” he said. His voice had turned hard, and flinty. Brittle too. Closed off. Yosuke had never really had that tone directed at him before. He found that he didn’t like it. 

He got up. There was a wave of dizzyness as he did, and he fought not to sway on his feet. 

Souji waited for him. That was obvious because as soon as Yosuke had his bearings again, Souji’s fist met his chest with a solid thump that sent Yosuke sprawling to the floor. There was another thump as he landed across Souji’s futon. Souji followed him down. He bracketed Yosuke’s hips with his knees, one hand grasped the front of Yosuke’s shirt. 

“Hey!” Yosuke said. 

He tried to hold up his hands to defend himself; he was too out of it to try and fight back. Souji grabbed his wrists and pinned them above Yosuke’s head. 

“You idiot,” he said. “You goddamn, idiot! How could you ever think that you’re not important to me? That I was keeping you out of pity? Didn’t we decide we were equals? You’re not a meat shield, Yosuke!”

Then he kissed him. 

Every single thought in Yosuke’s head turned into nothing more than TV static. 

It wasn’t how he’d imagined his first kiss going. For a start, Yosuke had imagined his first kiss being with a girl. Something soft maybe, outside her house after a date when Yosuke had walked her home. Maybe at a theme park or a movie, their mouths tasting like caramel popcorn. Instead here was Souji, pressing their mouths together angrily. For a long time, Yosuke just lay under him like a lump.

This wasn’t really happening, was it? Souji wasn’t really kissing him. This was some weird fever dream brought on by the TV. Any minute now, Yosuke would wake up and he’d be in his own room, in his own house, with a really embarrassing problem and a difficulty to look his best friend in the eye for a day. Because there was no way that Seta Souji, star of the school, leader of the investigation team, would ever deign to kiss Hanamura Yosuke: good for nothing Junes scum.

Souji tilted his head to a different angle. The kiss turned sweeter, somehow. The hand pinning Yosuke’s wrists to the futon trailed up his arms and cupped the side of Yosuke’s jaw. The fist on his shirt spread fingers across his chest. Yosuke closed his eyes, and kissed back. Souji tasted faintly of salty soup broth, but mostly of warmth and when Souji broke the kiss, Yosuke could only blink at him. 

“What was that for?” 

Souji, lips flushed red against his monochromatic visage, panting slightly, punched Yosuke in the shoulder. 

“Ow!”

“You’re not that stupid,” Souji said. He ran his tongue across his bottom lip. Yosuke’s eyes followed the movement and his stomach flipped. 

He propped himself up on his hands. He got Souji’s message. There were very few reasons that two people kissed. Especially when they were best friends, and both boys, and all the messy rest. “But you don’t really like me, do you, partner?” He smiled, waiting for the joke. 

Souji just stared him down. “Is it really that unbelievable?”

Yosuke opened his mouth, to say yes, to say that he didn’t like this joke anymore, to say… something. Anything. But anything he could have said in denial wilted under Souji’s stare. Souji didn’t really lie to people. Not when he looked like that anyway. Which meant that everything he had done he had meant which meant…

“Oh.” Yosuke said. 

Souji huffed a breath.

“Oh,” he agreed. He shuffled until he was no longer straddling Yosuke’s legs, ending the movement when he was crouched at the bottom of the futon and not really looking at Yosuke anymore. “I understand if you don’t feel the same way. I don’t need you to do that. I wanted you to understand that you’re important to me. That’s all.” 

He rolled up onto his feet. At the edge of Yosuke’s battered hearing he heard a sighed, “I made a mess,” as Souji bent to right the table and the bowls. 

“Wait,” Yosuke said. 

There was a dull pit of loss in the bottom of his stomach. There was a chill where Souji’s warmth had rested against Yosuke’s skin. 

Yosuke had never thought about it. There had been too many things in the way. They were both guys, Souji never seemed to be interested in romance, Souji was the king of the town and Yosuke was… decidedly not that. So it didn’t matter if Yosuke had feelings for Souji. Nothing would ever happen about it. It was just useless thinking, and he’d already made that mistake once in this town. It didn’t matter that sometimes when the light hit Souji just right in the evenings, Yosuke’s heart would do a backflip and take his lungs along for the ride. It didn’t matter that when Yosuke thought about thinking of it, he knew what the end of the thought would be. 

He could still feel the ghost of Souji’s lips against his own. 

“Souji.” 

He hardly ever used Souji’s real name. 

Souji stilled. He glanced at Yosuke. There was an uncertainty in the look, the cant of Souji’s mouth. What was he waiting for? What did he think Yosuke was going to do? Surely he didn’t… 

Yosuke didn’t know what to say. He knew he had to say something. If he let Souji leave this room without a single word passing his lips then he’d lose a thing that he hadn’t even known he’d had. Something that now it had been pointed out to him, Yosuke desperately wanted to keep. He bit his lip. The pain in his head didn’t help matters, but maybe it had helped a bit. There wasn’t enough room in Yosuke’s head to panic about what had happened. Or to explain it away. 

So Souji liked him. Like liked him. Like wanted to go on a date with him. Okay. Yosuke had watched enough movies to know what to do when someone said that to you.

“Wanna go somewhere? Like…” He rubbed the back of his head. This was so stupid. “Like on a date, or something, partner?” 

The uncertainty was still there. Yosuke cringed under the silence. Souji gave Yosuke a long, searching look that felt like it was looking into Yosuke’s very soul, before he gave a decisive nod. 

“When you’re better,” Souji said. “I’d like that. When you’re better.”

Relief flooded him. Pure and clear, and full of giddiness. Yosuke grinned. 

“Great,” Yosuke said, “Come back over here?”

Souji came. Slow, and steady, but Yosuke could tell that he was waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

He tugged Souji down onto the futon with him. Souji was warm, and soldi, and he smelled like unscented laundry soap and apple body wash. Yosuke nesteled into that smell and wasn’t able to hide the happy sigh when he found out that he fit against Souji’s collar perfectly. 

“You’re taking this well” Souji said, after awhile. 

“Yeah.” Yosuke nestled further. “I’m totally, one hundred percent going to freak out about this later. Don’t have the space for it right now. So enjoy the cuddles before I’m a flailing mess. You know I’m gonna be a flailing mess, partner. I mean! You kissed me!”

“I did,” Souji said. 

“And you got really angry at me,” Yosuke continued, “and… okay. Okay, I get it. You don’t want me to run into attacks that are meant for you anymore. Not gonna happen, partner. Especially now that you’re… I guess now that you’re my boyfriend.”

Boyfriend. It was a weird word. Almost just saying it was enough to send him into a panic. He could feel the muted fear in the bottom of his stomach. But it was worth the fear. It was worth the weirdness in his mouth to see Souji’s face light up pink on his cheeks and the tips of his ears.

Then I’ll have to protect you back,” Souji said, “partners.” 

That was acceptable. It was the best that Yosuke was going to get and he knew it. He nodded. He ignored his answering blush that had appeared with that straightforward declaration. He tugged Souji further into the futon so that they were both entangled together. Souji in his comfortable house clothes, Yosuke in his borrowed pyjamas. All of a sudden the energy faded away. Lulled into quiescence under the sweep of Souji’s hand in his hair, the feel of his shoulder against Yosuke’s cheek. 

Cuddling Souji was fantastic. Ten out of ten. Yosuke couldn’t believe that he’d never done this before. 

Souji snorted. 

“Said that outloud huh?”

“Some of it,” Souji said. 

Yosuke nodded. It was like Souji and the futon had flipped a switch in his head. He was tired again. His head was a dull little drum of pain that banged every time he moved. It was a struggle to keep his eyes open, especially with the lulling repetitive strokes of Souji’s hand. 

“I’m going to sleep now,” he told Souji. He wriggled closer, wrapping an arm around Souji’s waist, “you better stay. Gotta keep you safe.”

“I’ll stay,” Souji said. 

With that promise, Yosuke’s aching head—aching head that had been totally, completely worth it, it had saved Souji and got him a boyfriend—tipped into the dark of sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> I loved the idea of the game mechanics having effects in the real world, I just had to play with it! I hope you like this! Happy Chocobox ^^


End file.
